Showing posts with label excerpt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label excerpt. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Cliché

juno temple c/o tylershields.com


Cliché

“How does it feel to be a living cliché?”

It's what I'm wondering while she keeps talking, telling me how “great” she was on stage last night. 

Except instead of thinking it I say it and now she's making that face. The face that expresses how unkind I've been.

“I might be unkind and you might think me cruel but at least I didn't steal my stage name & persona from a movie about breaking someone's heart because I found it to be cute.”

It's then I realize I'm saying it all and she's crying but I don't care. I’m walking away. I need a hit. I'm bored. Fuck.

-Adrian / An Excerpt from The Perspectives/The Inauthentic Life 



*****for the Juno & Tyler fans ... The image is not the inspiration for the story / excerpt. I'm a huge fan of Mr. Shields work & his image of Juno perfectly captures the tone here. Kisses! m.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Mirrors, Versions, Originals...OH MY!

Mirrors, Versions, Originals...OH MY! 

Who are you if you aren't being the best version of yourself? A friend of friend at a party at a bar in an SF club was chatting with me many years ago as a drag king belted out her best of KD Lang. While the rest of the scene slow danced like a high school prom to the ballad I mentioned my desire to direct music videos and produce. (A lifetime long past I wanted a different life than the one I've chosen... Happily chosen I might add. Being an amazing producer in school doesn't mean you'll be happy doing it in life. Ah my dear film school mentor, I always knew I disappointed you.) Well, the friend of friend told me about 'Hollywood' and his perception of the people in it. What always stuck with me was one bit of dialogue and of course I used it, "Mirroring, that's what actors do when they meet normal people." I never judge a city or the people in it by other people's words, but I always did love his bit. So which version are you the original or are you the mirror? Anywho, being EVOL is busy work, so I must get back to helping others realize that EVOL is always deep within them and waiting for them to feel it. 

This is a excerpt from THE INAUTHENTIC LIFE. Its working title was "the perspectives" for anyone who is thrown a bit off. It will be out this year. Have a read if you've never read any of it. 

ENJOY! kisses, m.

kisses c/o tylershields.com

Mirrors.
(posted 9-27-2010)

Tell me you love me,” she says before gently grabbing my face and placing tiny little kisses on my lips. Delicate soft flits against mine. It’s 6:30 pm and I’m at a reading with the infamous Chloe St. Claire. Model turned actress turned model slash singer turned artist slash humanitarian actress. It’s the TV thing that wasn’t supposed to stay a thing for very long. My three and a half pages have become six pages and soon there will be none. We’re standing side by side with the writers, the actors, the directors, the producers and anyone else who isn’t necessary for participation at a reading. But this is different. Andrew fill-in-the-blank writer extraordinaire has called for a walkthrough reading.

She tells me “I hate how I have to be sad to play a happy character. It’s like lying and telling the truth at the same time. It’s not me.”  

Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy. While I’m here reading the pages out loud I wonder what happened to the old celluloid fairytales where love would conquer all in the end. Not like this. A girl is kissing another girl on page 15 while this man watches and then they’re all talking about it over dinner on page 16. At this moment I’m glad it’s Chloe’s turn at reading and not mine, but I keep following along with it anyway. Chloe is in true form the embodiment of the character I’m reading for but she’s already playing this other part like she’s me. I can’t help thinking that she’s better than me. Even when I lean in and kiss her while Andrew whatever-his-name-is, the writer says it’s not working I wonder if it’s my fault.

How can I be less myself and more like you?” This is what Chloe says over the table when I first met her six months ago.  No one could mistake Chloe for me or vice versa. She’s tall naturally blond sun-kissed and I am an average height brunette without much sun. But she sat in front of me with the very serious question and I just smiled without knowing what to say. It was the first time anyone had ever wanted to be me. Even I didn’t want to be me.

Mirroring. This is what actors do when they meet someone normal.” Alton explains this to me over lunch one day in the Sunset eight months ago. I’ve just told her I’m moving to LA to be an actress. She’s telling me this warning while wearing my Prada mules and my Chanel jacket with the same color hair and style that I have. Who are you if you aren’t your best friend?  I think that this is what people do when they meet someone new. Steal all the parts they love and copy them until you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. It’s a bit like leaching if you ask me. But no one asks me. You take enough parts and what’s left over isn’t worth anything. If you suck the one you truly love dry in a matter of months then where will you find it next?

Mid lip-lock with Chloe trying to get the scene right for the third time, I’m thinking about how this moment mirrors me and her. She’s no longer blond. Still sun-kissed. My paleness is warmer now and we both have the same length and color of hair. Am I the copy or is she? Her hands move in and she presses hard. More yells this writer. She grabs my waist and holds even longer. I wonder what’s she’s thinking. This has nothing to do with the lines.

So at this moment while Chloe is groping my breasts and Andrew what’s-his-name is screaming for more intensity I realize that she’s really me and I’m pretending to be someone else now. And it doesn’t matter when I wipe her saliva away from my face and he yells, “That’s it! Can you do that with Inza tomorrow?” Because she’s done it. Become me. A better version. And I’ve become someone else. Me with my three pages left, a mere walk on cameo in this TV thing can’t compare to the other person I’ve fallen into. That’s the real version of me, instead of her. That’s mirroring 101.

 “Do you want to come over?” Chloe asks me in the bathroom while doing a line of blow off the counter. I take a tissue and wipe my lips clean before reapplying more color. I’m watching me watch her in the mirror. Every detail down to her eyebrow shape is a slightly accentuated version of mine. There’s nothing original about her. She’s taken my nervous twitch and smile. Pursing her lips that same way I do. Lifting her eyes with the same arch and curve. These little unnoticed pieces are now her. She is me. Standing next to me in the mirror she says she’s impressed with my ability to jump into character after pushing her breasts up in the vintage Gucci halter. I think she’s lying because I need to prepare to be someone else now. But I say ‘why not’ instead of excusing myself.

I think back to the last few days before I left the city and always come back to that moment I met Alton for lunch in the Sunset. She wasn’t saying or acting any differently than she normally would have. In fact I think it was the one time she was most herself. Alton and I were inseparable aside from living arrangements several months earlier. She wasn’t me and I wasn’t her, but we were more the same than different and it could have gone on like that forever. Being me was who she was. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked with Alton since that day. I can only keep remembering how much she looked like me and talked like me in all the other memories. Stealing my words and my look with the guise of friendship. There’s no real connection without the mirror to remind that you aren’t really you.

It’s a quarter to seven when I wake up at Chloe’s. She already up in mid tree pose and not breathing or concentrating. She’s too busy staring at her picture on the back cover of Entertainment Weekly that’s lying spread out on the foot of the bed. I smile when she breaks position and asks about the freckles on her face being noticeable in the picture. I shake my head while telling her they’re unnoticeable and then try to tell her something about the black and white contrast in the photograph when she picks up the phone and starts dialing. It’s then I decide I need a shower because she’s too busy trying to be her being a better me to listen to me.

Somewhere between the infomercial versions of Price is Right and Let’s Make Deal she’s talking with her assistant about a script adaptation for Dostoevsky that her agent sent over. She keeps sending it back and tells her assistant to call her agent about this problem. I smile and the assistant hits speed dial over the speaker. The conversation isn’t great. Chloe drops three “I fucking don’t want to’s” before ending the call. She throws the oversized script at her assistant before falling into a tantrum. The rant begins and something about her face reveals that she does have freckles. The phone rings again and her agent is on speaker once again. Her assistant hands me a cup of coffee and I start to read the Harpers Bazaar that’s on the table.

It’s fifteen after nine when my phone rings and I decide to leave the scene of dysfunction. Tucking out front door with my heels in hand and phone cradled beneath my neck I whisper into the line.
“Hel-lo.” I serenade into the line while quickly stepping into my shoes.
“Jemma darling, how are things?”
“Wayne Baby! Great.” I forget my place and scream. “Look, the place you set me up with has been fabulous. Thank you again…”
“Look Honey, I need a favor. And I couldn’t just have anyone call you for this?”
“Anything Wayne, you’ve been a…”
“Alex is coming into town today. He’ll be at the airport in four hours. Can you get him?”
“Of course.  I have a fitting in an hour and a half, but I should be able to swing it.”
“Thank you doll. I’m glad you’re enjoying things. Sorry to run, but I have to...”
“Oh. Well of course.”
“Bye Jemma.”
“Kisses. Wayne.”

Looking in the mirror is never enough.” This is the advice I get from a woman I might call mentor if she wasn’t chain smoking and eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger.  She’s telling me that the “mirror doesn’t tell the truth” while wearing something nameless you might find in a vintage shop in the Haight, although she insists it came from Versace circa 1982. And she keeps telling the wardrobe mistress she’s a 7 not an 11. I want to laugh every time I see her. But she’s right about one thing. The mirror is not your friend.

I’m thinking about the enemies not in the mirror when the wardrobe mistress is fighting with an assistant over another actress’s size. As the wardrobe mistress verbally assaults her entourage the young woman looks uptight and it’s hard to believe she was in that BIG movie last year or on the cover of Glamour this month. I’ve never seen a person look so scared of the truth as the wardrobe mistress pulls a curtain to shut out the enemies not in the mirror.

On my end of the room the pants feel far too tight already. But I’m at a fitting to make them tighter because the physical being of the character hasn’t truly been captured by my performance. As they are fitting me for the next smaller size of pants because this is what “the character” would wear, I realize that it’s how you see things.

Perspective is a way of life, maybe the only way? We all live inside this tiny little image of ourselves. It’s not how they see us at all. That doesn’t matter. It’s only how you see yourself that matters most in the world. “But how can you ever really know who you are if the mirror lies?” it’s what I’m thinking when I must have said it out loud.

“Take a picture.” This tiny little girl with the schedule for shooting whispers and hands me the latest script revision. It’s now three less pages most of which will land me on the cutting room floor. She smiles and leans in again. “Cameras don’t lie. And it’s not the mirror that lies… it’s your mind.”

On my last day in the city I took a bus and then a walk down by the Presidio and ended up by Crissy Fields. There’s this place in the city that I like to go to. It’s past the Marina before you get to Crissy Fields close to the Wave Organ. It’s a corner of earth where nothing looks like anything else. You look at three sides of water and see something different. Along the way there are no real residences unless you live on a sailboat or a yacht. I pass this part of the Marina where Wayne has a friend with a boat. A “somebody” who owned and lived on this boat. Passing. Remembering that it was close to where I went to this party once.

These parties always happened there but this one wasn’t great, filled with people that didn’t like each other like Reggie and Ashton and important people who mattered like Wayne. Adrian was there with me. Things were ok then before we left for there and... Most of the parties weren’t great then but you don’t know that until you’ve left them. That was when the tourists would show up. When things stopped being great the scene tourists always managed to appear. The teenage girls and boy with their Ugg boots, Converse and laced up jeans matched with some dying pieces of Heatherette matched with a laced up tank from Diesel under a vintage bomber jacket produced by Levi Strauss. Elitist brats wasting time and drugs on this party in the Marina for kicks wearing their faux scene clothes trying to imitate the scenesters who were already bored and leaving.

One time at these parties a body was found dead after the tourists arrived and left. The newspaper reports were of multiple rapes and assaults among the children before this body was found drawn and quartered hanging over the side of a boat in a net. A boat that someone who was somebody owned in the Marina. It was the rawest form of survival of the fittest. Baby scenes picking away the competition that looks exactly the same. The whole mess and scandal forced the owner of the boat to sell. There’s a rumor that you can hear the cries of the rape victims and see the pieces of dead flesh floating around in the waters of the Marina. Even in the chill of the breeze the view is spectacular. When I walk alone to the edge of the water I’m almost expecting to hear the screaming voices echoing through the organ.

Everything the same in nature is different without trying. Reflections in the mirror are nothing like the things in nature. Animals don’t have mirrors to see themselves. How can they know what they look like? By looking at each other. It’s in the similarities of each other that animals know what they are. There is no need for begging and borrowing.

You have to go. I can’t.”
“But you’re….”
“Shh. I can’t be happy for you and let go.”
“Don’t do this. I don’t want to let go.”
“Then don’t. You know I love you.”
“No, I don’t... Tell me you love me.”
Thirty seconds of jaw dropping silence follows the scene. It’s like real-life imitating art, imitating real-life. Inza’s back on set for the shooting and the intensity between her and Chloe is unmistakable as they struggle to break away from the kiss. It’s hard to believe that there’s no love between them. I can see why Chloe misses her. Maybe that’s why I went home with her. There’s just that piece missing in her that wants to be seen. To be loved. The mirror lies. The camera doesn’t.


I’m on a boat to Staten Island with this friend of Andy’s who I’ve only met five hours ago. Being on boats reminds me of Jemma and being in the Marina where those kids killed those other kids playing scene. I need a hit just thinking about killing and Jemma and looking for something in everything. I’ve been everywhere and no where trying to find something in everything. Alex hasn’t been at Andy’s since 4am and doesn’t answer his phone. Someone at Andy’s says he went to LA already. We weren’t leaving until tomorrow night. And I’m still trying to remember what happened when I was losing something somewhere this morning while taking a hit outside of Tiffany’s and what you were doing when the car disappeared. I keep thinking I need some candy to handle this memory that isn’t complete… while I’m ringing up Alex again the view is amazing. I tell this gorgeous woman about the view before she says that I’ll catch up to Alex in a little bit and not to take the candy. After she touches my hair she reminds me that she’s already booked my flight to LA to follow him and we’re just killing time. I like killing time with her it lets me like her smile. We’re talking about things that matter, when she giggles about the whores and Van Gogh instead of blushing like other girls might I know there’s more to this one than meets the eye.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

White

White Lines

(Ooh White Lines) Vision dreams of passion 
(Blowin’ through my mind)


Walking the line.  2012.

Lines.

Arrogance isn’t a pretty shade of lipstick. Take it off.” This is what he says to me. So I’m taking it off. I’ve excused myself to the bathroom and actually wiping this color off along with my attitude.

He’s been here for ten minutes I can’t tell what he wants exactly, but he always wants something. It’s never that deep.

While he flips through a copy of Italian Vogue he becomes a bit nostalgic and is telling me about his trip to Italy if you can call twenty-four hours of binge drinking, drugs and anonymous whores a trip. Anyway he says that there’s this mosque that I have to see… “Oh but Jemma, it’s best if you do a line first.”

This morning I woke up promptly at 7:15 am to the sounds of Spandau Ballet dancing in my head before the alarm went off. Of course it’s early… Fred said to be ready to jump into character by 11:15 am. That’s the time for my callback. It’s some flat around the corner on the fourth floor at a leased out building. Of all places, it’s probably the nicest meeting I’ve taken in a while. 

And I’ve spent this morning listening to 80s music for my 80s book. This is me calling it ‘getting into character’ when it's not really like that at all. But what else is it like? It’s all for this 80s script that my agent sent over in a flash three weeks ago along with the book. A book I haven’t read until now. I know enough dialogue to pose for the audition, but the director saw my tape and wants to meet me. I’m completely wrong for the part, but they keep telling me otherwise. Tell me how does a pasty brunette play a sun-tanned blonde? So I keep telling myself that the book is better at identifying motivation than the script. Through reading it I will understand the how’s and why’s of this person and looking in the mirror means nothing about becoming her. This is how I get into character.

Why do they make movies about books? Because people are too lazy, of course I mean too busy, to read. It’s like a public service for those who aren’t able to find the time to read.

As I wipe off the lipstick and reach into the medicine cabinet to get his coke I decide that I’m dumping it down the drain. Down, down, down while the water runs. I hum a line of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire while stopping to fix my eyes. He can wait. If this is why he really came, then there’s no reason to come back again.

“So what are you doing here?” I ask him while re-emerging with a smile.

“Jemma, you look really good, have you gotten some sun?” Always changing the subject. And of course back to where we started.

It is always an awkward conversation between awkward people who haven’t seen each other in six months. He’s thinking that I’m thinking we’re still sleeping together. I slept alone last night.

It all started when he came in. The moment when I answered the door and almost didn’t let him in. Hello’s that are forced out with an imaginary gun to the back of your head. Hugs that might feel less uncomfortable if it were a stranger. Then there’s a pause. That kind you make only for the Witnesses handing out flyers. You never let them in. No matter what. But I let him in. Smiling and laughing a cracked out grin that smells of tequila and gin at 10am with his awkward greeting.

It’s not that his story about Italian mosques wasn’t fascinating. But I find it necessary to try cutting through the red tape of the last fifteen minutes and get to the point before he starts telling me about the viewing of street art in Paris subways during the middle of April.
“Adrian to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
 “What?” He looks at me with irritation.
“Darling what do you want?”
“My gram.”
“It’s been six months… it’s gone.” Is he hard up? No one carries anything like that. He couldn’t have possibly come for a gram let alone remembered he left it.
“Wow Jemma, that script looks massive. Big part? Little part?” The sidestep to avoid.
“It’s a part.”

And he stops to look around before telling me about driving on Sunset last night. Telling me that there’s a faded line in the middle of the lane that causes him to feel like he has to make a choice. I tell him that’s not Sunset and that he should have just switched lanes. It sounds more like there’s another story I haven’t heard. I stop to wonder how Adrian has a car. But he interrupts me before that becomes an inquiry.

“Jemma, can I? He waves his hands up at me while pointing towards the sink.

 I nod and he heads into the newly painted kitchenette. His voice raises slightly as he rolls up the sleeves on his button-down brilliance before starting to wash his hands. “Don’t worry about the gram I have more. You don’t need? Cause I can…” With a flick of the wrist and the perfect timed punch line of a comedian he produces a small object.

“That’s quite alright Adrian.” Away it goes. Poof. Thin air.

The whole time he’s watching me try to cover my pages and hide the book. Washing and washing longer than is humanly necessary he asks me to tell him about the script and my basis for portrayal. I know he doesn’t care, but I start talking.

It isn’t long before I realized I’ve given him too much and it sounds like bragging. I wasn’t but it doesn’t matter. It’s enough.

Arrogance isn’t a pretty shade of lipstick. Even on you Jemma. Take it off.

This is where we are now.

Lines are like the things that people might say or do only they don’t but you might understand why they might say or do them.

On page 26 my character is having an existential crisis. “Who am I?” she cries in the middle of it all. Between the black characters in front of the white background she can not find herself. Today I know who I am. Arrogant and wearing the wrong shade of lipstick. At least I know it’s not me and that it’s really the bleach blonde tanned bimbo trying to find herself in between the pages while listening to really bad music.

“Have you seen Alex?”
“Alex? Isn’t he up in San Francisco? You must see him more than me.”
“No. He’s here in town. We’re supposed to catch up. I just thought…”
“Adrian. How long have you been here?”
“15 minutes.”
“It’s been more like 25, but I meant in town. How long?”
“I don’t know. How long have you been a superficial stuck-up starlet faking tans with lines to read?” He smiles and laughs. This is the part where I’m supposed to have a sense of humor and smile.  But I just can’t today.

I put my hands through my hair with a feeling of overwhelming frustration. There’s got to be a point to his damage, I just can’t figure it out. I think I’m going to be late and there are still 15 pages left.  I want to get angry and scream at him when he does this. I want to scream aloud and tell him that I may be a superficial starlet but at least I’m really being me. I want to scream and tell him that he’s a poor man’s shadow, excuse for someone who used to be real, someone who is faking their way through everything. But I don’t. Cause I wouldn’t mean it.

“You don’t mind?” He looks at me with his eyes bugged out and waves a pocket mirror. Adrian is always prepared in a crisis. I wonder what he’d do in the event of a water landing. Take it chilled or on the rocks?

I just shake my head. He knows I don’t care. And I’m supposed to be the arrogant one.

He does lines, like I learn them. With the exception that sometimes his escapades land him in the bath room of a cherry colored bar doing lines of blow off a naked stripper’s bare breasts whereas my performance might land me a part in the next big picture from the next big hot-shot director.

 “Let’s do lines together!” He announces. To this I can smile and giggle.

He does a line. I read a line. He does a line. I read a line. Then another. And another. Until I decide… “I can’t do this.”

“Come on, Jemma. What’s wrong? Want something? It’ll make you feel better. Loosen you up.”
“I’m good. I just can’t. Not now. I have to go to this callback and I think I’m going to be late.”
“Cattle callback?”
I laugh and tell him, “Why yes, with other superficial stuck-up starlets whose teeth and mouths are too wide.”
”Why? What? When?”
“In like 20 minutes.”
“Oh fuck. Let me call the driver. I can have you there in 10.”
“It’s only just around the corner. You can come if you want.”

Adrian is too pretentious sometimes. All morning he’s been riding around in a town car with a driver called Chaz calling it a stretch. The driver barely speaks English and prefers to call us for directions instead of talking or turning around. Adrian has already taken out his mirror to offer the driver a line after telling him about it on the phone. I’m more surprised when the guy doesn’t take it. I keep reading lines. I must look pissed. He won’t make eye contact and now he’s taking out that small object again. Shit. We’re going to pass the place. I’m getting out even though the car is still moving.

On page 27 my character has a breakthrough moment. A door opens and she walks through it. This is the scene the director wants me to read. I keep thinking back to Spandau Ballet and how the only reason this is a movie is because someone wrote a book. Playing my part as a public servant. Helping make the population literate.

This is ‘The Director’ a million girls want to work with and will accommodate in anyway. I should have done the line. But I didn’t. I understand why I said no and may have wanted to. ‘The Director’ likes my face. He told my agent this. This man that a million girls want to work with likes my face. I want him to like my acting. Take me seriously for this part. Because this is why I’m here. Instead my face got me here.

All of this is me ‘getting into character’ while I’m trying to remember my lines. Remembering those things that I might say or do only don’t so that they might understand why they are said or done.



We’re in a stretch. Although it isn’t. This is what they call a stretch in the city; here it’s a town car. It’s almost 11:00 and the driver keeps calling my cell for directions.  I’ve made this arrangement with the driver and offered him something for the road.  He declines. Jemma looks pissed, but I can’t help that she’s in a bad mood today. I offered her some candy. It’s too bad she doesn’t want to play. She’s so much more fun when she falls in the water. Maybe she will after this cattle audition for mindless blonde bimbos with superficial tans and weekend Daddy’s to pay their bills. Jemma is too good for this. I wonder if she still thinks we are sleeping together. I’m thinking of taking another hit as she opens the door. The stretch hasn’t quite stopped. This is what I’m thinking… I’m going to call Alex again.